Family of 5 visiting in late May with kids ages 4, 12 & 17. We are only doing 3-days of parks and I'm stressing a little about which park(s) to assign for each day.
We definitely want to do TL one day, and visit AK & MK on the others, but possibly MK twice. We have the most fun with rides!
This is what I first came up with, but I'm thinking it might be too much for the 4 y/o and it would be an extra $500 for PH tickets):
THU 29th - Start AK with early entry, park hop to MK in the afternoon and stay to close
FRI 30th - MK only (early entry could be rough with the 14hr previous day)
SAT 31st - TL 10am to 5pm
2nd option-
THU 29th - MK early entry to close
FRI 30th - Typhoon Lagoon 10-5 (as kind of a rest day?)
SAT 31st - AK early entry to close (I'm kind of liking no stress of park hopping and not having to rush, but a little worried we might run out of things to do)
Looking forward to opinions and suggestions!
Thank you Kiran for your insight. We are staying at a hotel near Disney springs that has early entry benefits, not actually on site. I watched the video on Rob's day at AK, and it looked really enjoyable. We definitely will be getting LLMPs for MK, but you might be right for needing to pony up for the SP as well!
Since you have early entry, I guess you're staying at a Disney resort (though not necessarily). If that's the case, you get free admission to Typhoon Lagoon on your check-in day.
Magic Kingdom is doable in one day, but it can be tiring. But so is park hopping. In either case I suggest taking a long mid-day break. That's when the line ups are the busiest anyway, you can get rides done more quickly in the morning and evening. And then it's immaterial whether you hop to another park in the evening or go back to the same one.
Early entry is useful if you want to avoid paying for single pass rides (flight of passage, seven dwarfs), but to really take advantage of early entry you need to be there super early in the morning, ideally 1 hour and 15 minutes prior to early entry. This makes for a very tiring day. So since you have young kids and want to get a lot done, I highly recommend getting single pass lightning lanes instead of early entry for those rides. You could still use early entry for some less in-demand rides and not have to get there so early.
I also highly recommend multi pass lightning lanes on your mk days. For ak it's useful but not absolutely necessary. Na'vi River journey will likely be a walk-on during early entry (and you don't have to show up super early to do it), and make sure to get to Kilimanjaro when it opens. But if you're planning to park hop, then definitely get the multi pass.
It is possible to do every ride and show at Animal Kingdom and be done by 3pm. But it's also possible to take a more relaxed approach and just enjoy your day there. Check out the Ear Scouts Animal Kingdom lightning Lane video, where Rob shows up at a reasonable hour, and has a very easy time doing every ride.
Which option you do will depend on exactly which rides you want to do. If you want to do absolutely everything at magic Kingdom, then doing 1.5 days there will definitely be less tiring. But if you're more selective about what you want to ride there, doing one park a day would give you more opportunity to just enjoy the parks.